Understanding The Impact of an Apprenticeship-Based Scientific Research Program on High School Students’ Understanding of Scientific Inquiry

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to understand the impact of an apprenticeship program on high school students’ understanding of the nature of scientific inquiry. Data related to seventeen students’ understanding of science and scientific inquiry were collected through open-ended questionnaires. Findings suggest that although engagement in authentic scientific research helped the participants to develop competency in experimentation methods it had limited impact on participants’ learning of the implicit aspects of scientific inquiry and NOS. Discussion focuses on the importance of making the implicit assumptions of science explicit to the students in such authentic scientific inquiry settings through structured curriculum.

Appendix 1: Understanding Nature of Science Survey

Directions

Appendix 2: Science Academy Students Only

Instructions for Students

We kindly ask you to describe your experiences as a high school scientist by answering the following questions. Select students who participated in the science internship program may be invited to write a chapter for the monograph.

Please answer the following questions as honestly as it is possible.

1.

Can you please describe how you heard of this program? Who encouraged you to seek out for this opportunity?

2.

How did you feel when you knew that you were accepted into the program? How did people around you (teachers, friends, family members) reacted to your decision to participate in this program?

3.

What were your motivations for joining this program? Like, what were you expecting to get out of this program before joining?

(a)

Can you elaborate on what you actually learned through this program compared to what you were expecting to learn? Any disappointments, surprises?

4.

How long were you involved in this internship program?

5.

Where at did you conduct your research project?

6.

Can you tell us whether you conducted an original research project or did you work on an existing project? How was this decision made?

7.

If you worked on a project that you designed yourself, how did you become interested in the topic that you researched in your project?

8.

How did you go about designing your research, what questions were you interested in answering?

(a)

How did you go about answering your question(s)?

(b)

What type of data did you collect?

(c)

How did you know that such data would help you answer your question?

(d)

How did you analyze and interpret your data? What type of help did you get when you were analyzing data and from whom (prof, graduate student or others)?

(e)

How did you learn how to use the instruments for collecting your data?

9.

What did you learn about the ways in which scientists think, before, during and after data collection and analysis through your participation in this program? How did you learn it?

10.

What did you learn about the ways in which scientists do their work (i.e., hypothesis formulation, design of research, data collection and analysis, writing conclusions), as a result of your participation in this program?

11.

What did you learn about the topic you studied?

12.

If you worked on your project as part of a team, what were your responsibilities? How and at what level did you participate in designing the question, deciding the type of data you needed to collect, how to collect and analyze data, and write the conclusions?

13.

If you conducted an original research on your own, describe the parts of research for which you received help and the nature of help your received?

14.

If you were to design this program, what would you change/modify to make it more beneficial for the program participants? Like, what would you like the professors to do differently, your teachers to do differently, graduate students to do differently, students to do differently?

15.

What type of college degree and career do you plan to pursue? How has your participation in this research experience influenced your career decisions? What are some of the critical moments that influenced your decisions?

PART THREE: Views of Scientific Inquiry Questionnaire (VOSI): ALL GROUPS

Name: ______________________________

Class: ______________________________

Date: ______________________________

The following questions are asking for your views related to science and scientific investigations. There are no right or wrong answers.

Please answer each of the following questions. You can use all the space provided to answer a question and continue on the back of the pages if necessary.

1.

What types of activities do scientists (e.g., biologists, chemists, physicists, earth scientists) do to learn about the natural world? Discuss how scientists (biologists, chemists, earth scientists) do their work.

2.

How do scientists decide what and how to investigate? Describe all the factors you think influence the work of scientists. Be as specific as possible.

3.

A person interested in birds looked at hundreds of different types of birds who eat different types of food. He noticed that birds who eat similar types of food, tended to have similar shaped beaks. For example, birds who eat hard shelled nuts have short, strong beaks, and birds who eat insects from tide pools have long, slim beaks. He concluded that there is a relationship between beak shape and the type of food birds eat.

(a)

Do you consider this person’s investigation to be scientific? Please explain why or why not.

(b)

Do you consider this person’s investigation to be an experiment? Please explain why or why not.

(c)

Do you think that scientific investigations can follow more than one method? Describe two investigations that follow different methods. Explain how the methods differ and how they can still be considered scientific.

4.

(a)

If several scientists, working independently, ask the same question and follow the same procedures to collect data, will they necessarily come to the same conclusions? Explain why or why not.

(b)

If several scientists, working independently, ask the same question and follow different procedures to collect data, will they necessarily come to the same conclusions? Explain why or why not.

(c)

Does your response to (a) change if the scientists are workingtogether? Explain.

(d)

Does your response to (b) change if the scientists are workingtogether? Explain.

5.

(a)

What does the word “data” mean in science?

(b)

What is involved in data analysis?

(c)

Is “data” the same or different from “evidence?” Explain.

6.

Occasionally scientists encounter inconsistencies in their data. What do you think scientists do when some part of their data do not fit with what they expect (an “outlier” or inconsistency is found)?

7.

Explain how scientists form hypothesis. What makes a good and a bad hypothesis?

8.

Do you need to have a hypothesis to conduct a scientific investigation? __Yes__No. Explain your justification in the space provided below.

9.

How do you think scientists develop theories? Provide a detailed explanation about the way scientists develop theories

10.

Can scientists develop theories without collecting data?—Yes—No. Explain the justification for your answer in the space provided below.

11.

Can scientific theories change? If you think the answer is yes, why would scientists change established scientific theories such as Newton’s Laws? If you think the answer is No, explain why?

Appendix 3

Do you think there are multiple methods or one single method of inquiry that scientists follow? Explain

Scientific method

There is no one route to true scientific investigation due to the fact that people perceive and examine things differently. Paralleling this is the thought that any method used to make conjectures about the world around us can be considered scientific

In our project we tried to attach metal to C60 in two different ways: laser ablation and synthetic chemistry. Had we been successful, we would have used different methods to achieve the same ends. They were scientific because we set out to prove something, observed results and concluded something

I think they should all follow the scientific method

There is only the scientific method. There are always variations within experiments but they should all follow the same format to be considered scientific. For example, one scientist may discover something by chance and then test it, and another scientist may make a discovery after years of research

Prompt

How do scientists develop theories? Explain

Scientific theories

Scientists probably develop theories after years of careful observations and finding patterns in their data. After all, you can’t just throw out a theory without first explaining where it came from and what kind of data you have as backup. For example, a scientist spends 10 years on a tropical island, observing the different kinds of monkeys present. Out of the many species on the island, two are the most successful—the brown-haired monkeys and the white-haired monkeys. The scientist proposes that these species are the most sociable species of monkeys because they are always seen grooming and taking care of each other. With nearly 10 years of solid proof and observations, this scientist has developed a logical, possibly true theory

They develop theories by observation of their surroundings. They think of things that occur naturally and try and implement these observations in their field. For instance, cobalt has a high curie temperature; so adding it to Tb6Fe0.625Co0.375Sb2 should increase the curie temperature of that alloy. Theories do not have to have any solid proof. After all, most scientists assume that all theories are just scientific guesses. For example, Neil Bohr’s theory of the atomic structure was unproved during his time, but people still accepted it as fact

Prompt

Can scientific theories change? If you think the answer is yes, why would scientists change established scientific theories such as Newton’s Laws? If you think the answer is No, explain why?

Tentativeness

Yes. Galileo’s theory concerning heliocentricity changed, in fact revolutionized, scientific theories of his day. In the same way, scientific laws that bind the world we live in can be changed through new discoveries

I think scientific theories could change, but if done correctly and accurately then they don’t need to be changed, such as Newton’s Laws. They could change in the sense that there is another way of thinking about the scientific phenomena. They could change also to better modify the scientific theory

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